Bow-tied in the Middle (#273) 1996

Jessica Stockholder, sometime in the recent past, made this construction of found objects and materials, "Bow-tied in the Middle". There's a real material presence here; a kind of casual layering of things that don't typically belong together. The purple form could almost be a painting, but it's not really—it's more like a wall, or a screen. The yellow shape is reminiscent of a geometric abstraction, but it's slightly off, slightly wonky. And then the orange string - or is it rope? - slicing through the space. What I love about Stockholder's work is how she refuses to let any one element dominate. Everything is in conversation, pushing and pulling against each other. This makes me think of Kurt Schwitters, and his Merz constructions, but where he was about fragments and scraps, Stockholder is about abundance and excess. It's like she's saying, "Why choose when you can have it all?" Art is a continuous exchange of ideas; it thrives on open-ended questions rather than pat answers.